M&A continued to drag its feet in January, with a third of the number of deals compared to the same month last year, according to data from Refinitiv. Financials and tech led the way but deal values and volume were off sharply compared to 2022. Read our data analysis below.

The number of middle-market tech deals– transactions between $100M and $1B — was down sharply year-on-year, from 48 deals to just 11. The largest such deal was the $900 million acquisition of Western Digital Corp. by Apollo Global Management and Elliott Investment Management. Western Digital is a computer and data storage manufacturer in Silicon Valley.

Financials yielded deal volumes of $3.7 billion in the month from 10 deals, a 30 percent drop from the same time a year ago. Within this sector, banks were the most popular target, comprising six of these 10 deals.

Examples included Seacoast Banking Corp.’s $450 million deal to acquire Professional Holding Corp., First Bancshares Inc.’s purchase of Heritage Southeast Bancorp., and United Community Banks Inc.’s acquisition for Progress Financial Corp.

The only other sector with double-digit totals for the month was healthcare, which saw 10 deals in total valued at $2.6 billion. The largest deal in this space was Evolent Health‘s $650 million acquisition of Magellan Specialty Health, a company spun off by Centene that focuses on behavioral health such as mental illness.

In league tables, Goldman Sachs has started the year at the top, advising on $2.29 billion of deals in the month. Piper Sandler is a shade behind them, advising on $2.26 billion of deals. Obviously, there’s still a long way to go for the 2023 crown.

Check out the full breakdown of January’s biggest middle-market deals here.

Cole Lipsky